


Restless

by Yusariis



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Gen, Reflect, small part of unwritten series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 03:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8085037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yusariis/pseuds/Yusariis
Summary: Zevran finds the Warden still awake after their trip to the Deep Roads.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not much to this one... it's a small snippet of my Warden/Zevran drabblings, collectively referred to as 'Reflect'. Hopefully I can get more up in this category, but it's more a term used for the whole thing As i pan it out, rather than a definite series.  
> Hope you guys like it anyway.

Zevran’s half-tempted to turn off the damn light for the first time he’d ever been invited into Lyria’s tent.

He moans softly at the disturbance to his sleep, squeezing his eyes as tight as he can in hopes that, just maybe, the oil will run dry and it’ll flicker out on its own. Perhaps if he’s restless-sounding enough, she’ll turn it down?

When she turns under his arm, part of him thinks she just might. She stays like that for a few seconds and it’s a skill he learned from necessity that the softness to his face doesn’t change under the feel of her gaze.

“Your breathing changed.” Damn. “I’ll turn it off, I’m sorry.”

“Just down.” She’s not sleeping anytime soon, if the clear timbre of her voice is any indicator. “Maker, how do you can stay up so _late_?” She chuckles once, quietly, lifelessly, before shifting back onto her side. Zevran feels the lighting dim from behind his eyelids and he lets out a breath.

“It helps when you go to sleep first.” She answers him after a pause.

“…” That got his attention. “They’re back?”  He opens an eye to look at her. Once in a while, the nightmares are enough to keep her up, but ever since he started coming to her tent, she's at least been able to... _put use_ to the adrenaline.

Call it an added talent of his.

“No I… I just….” She pulls her arm back from the lamp and tucks both around herself. He can feel her thumb sliding down his arm. “If they were, I’d….” She trails off and clicks her tongue at the end. The other eye opens.

“You would…?”

“… I wouldn’t know how to handle it.” A lifeless chuckle. “I just….” She’s quiet again for a spell. “I couldn’t stop thinking about…” Lyria takes a deep breath and clears her throat. “Hespith mentioned a song.”

-

_“You’ve heard the song, Dream-Friend. I feel it under my skin – but you don’t love it like they do…Like I do.”_

-

“It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.” She says this too quietly to be comfortable.  “Too beautiful – the kind of beauty where you want to rip the skin and hair and bone from your head just to get to it quicker.” His throat, suddenly, feels dry and he swallows. “But after a while, when you get closer to it you have,” A deep breath. “A better…idea…” There’s another pause and she adjusts herself again. Zevran shifts onto his elbow to see her better. “You feel it from under the ground like… like, like the dirt is making it echo an-and expand around you.

“And… you want to dig.”

A pit drops in his stomach.

“You want to dig and dig and you wanna keep digging ’til you go passed the Deep Roads and you’ll swallow the fuckin’ dirt if it means you’ll dig quicker, if you’ll get to it quicker, and the closer you get, the louder you hear it and the less you….” Lyria trails off, the last of her words carried on breath alone and not her voice. Her fingers curl and uncurl from her hand, holding the next word in her shaking palm.

She swallows thickly.

“Think.”

Another silence creeps into the tent and he feels goose bumps on her skin from even entertaining the idea. Zevran is still, if only because just a year ago, not thinking would have been a blessing. He doesn’t know what to think now… only that he’s grateful that he still does.

“Alistair says it’s ‘The Calling’ – when the taint starts to sicken you like the rest…you go into the Deep Roads to… die.” She breathes deeply. “ _One last honorable battle against the darkspawn_. ” She scoffs. “That’s why they… why _we_ do it… We hear the song.” The fingers from her outstretched hand curl. “I’ll…. hear that song. Someday. Again.” She sits up. Lyria folds her arms and rests them on her knees, pulled together and bent.

“I was terrified of my Taint.” She says. “That song called to me but it took so much away, I was _sure_ I’d become a ghoul or a  Shriek, I…. I thought I’d terrorize Thedas from the bulk of the horde.” She stops and breathes, slowly, dark eyes boring into the corner of the tent, distant and focused.

“I was wrong.”

-

_Whipping flesh-tendrils and a snarling face, at one with the thick pustules of skin and blood and throbbing bits.  Clawing fingers and an open front – spewing, screaming **breeding.**_

**_“Broodmother.”_ **

_Spittle lands on Lyria’s frozen face._

_She panics._

_She charges, axe swinging at her potential future._

_They both scream._

_-_

“I was really… _really_ wrong.” She sighs, burying her face in her hands. She inhales and lets it out in a shuddering sigh that feels like forever, like she was letting out all of the air in her person.

“…” He sucks on his lips.  “Lyria-”

“I won’t do it.” She turns and looks him dead in the eye, a hand still rubbing her chin and cheek. “I won’t do it, they can’t make me.” Her voice is hard now, still shaky and miserable, but confident. Assured in her decision. “I won’t die with the Blighted a-a-an’ the Broodmothers.” She sniffles, pulling her hand away from her wet cheek, her reddened face. “I won’t give ‘em any more battles than I gotta, I won’t let ‘em… _come_ from me, I won’t answer their blighted fucking _Calling_ and I. Will not. Dig.”

She says this through gritted teeth, hands clasped on her forearms tightly and purpling from the pressure.

“I’ll go how _I_ want to.” Lyria blinks back the threat of more tears and as she continues, the shaky, wispy sounds of sorrow give way to stubbornness in the face of fear. “I go with a home I built a-and a land that’s mine and in the arms of my people, like I was fuckin’ _promised_ as a girl. I’ll scatter my ashes so the Taint spares the land and the ashes return me to it as the Dalish should, even _if_ I can’t have my fuckin’ burial. I’ll pass Dal’Thanaan to the willing an’ worthy and it’ll kill every last Darkspawn it comes across.”

“And,” She says, voice as hard as grey iron. “I’ll die after I cut off the fuckin’ Archdemons head _and jam it on a spike_.”

The light in the corner is dim and flickers weakly, but burns on. She breathes from her mouth, deeply, to calm herself, her cheeks are streaked wet all over again, silently save for her own haggard breathing. She’s the picture of terror and tyranny, stubborn beyond reproach and eyes like vengeance.

And those eyes tremble with tears. Lyria heaves one, last, haggard breath before she lets them fall.

They stay in this stillness for a while. Lyria lets herself cry in soft bursts of choked gasping and wracked sobs for a handful of seconds before they give way once more to near-silent breaths. Zevran finds himself still and quiet in this moment, from both respect and a lack of direction (what could he say – or do – that she hadn’t already?).

One of those silences lingers longer than the others. Lyria breathes once, twice, thrice more before sighing deeply. She pulls her face from her hands, practically washed in her own tears, and pushes back the thick, kinky hairs that cling to her wet face.

“Thank you.” Lyria says, wiping the tear lines with the heels of her palms. She winces at the tightness the tears brought on the corners of her eyes. “I… know you didn’t ask, but you listened a-and that was nice.” The corner of her mouth twitches upwards for a brief half-smile, lasting only a second. “Just that made me feel less…” She trails off, unable to find the word… or any word.

So she stops thinking of one. “Thanks.” She smiles at him – wearily, wilted at best, but earnest and grateful. When she pushes forward to kiss him, he can smell the salt on her face.

Her hand cups his cheek and Zevran finds the urge to move. He lets himself fall onto his back rather than lean on an arm so both can be free to wrap around her and pull her towards him, on top of him, across him, whatever will keep her close. He presses himself as tightly to her as he can while her free hand holds his neck and she clings as tightly as he does. Her fingernails dig into his neck and he’s almost certain he’s grabbing her too tightly but all he can think is if he could kiss her harder, if doing so could rip the Taint right out of her body and if she would let him if he could.


End file.
